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You can skip the driving by holding down the action button by the car; your partner will drive you to the next destination (and it will skip straight there). I found that essential to my enjoyment of the game.

I've encountered a catastrophic difficulty spike in my XCOM:EU game on normal, and I'm a bit baffled. I've got a UFO landing that, every time I play it, wipes out all my veterans. It's the first encounter I've had with a Sectopod, but that's only part of the problem. The geometry, the sheer volume of xenos, their level of armament, it all seems fairly insurmountable. I've got 4 colonels, a major, and a captain all in titan armor and armed with a mix of laser and plasma weaponry, but we just can't seem to find a foothold. Generally we can't gain any kind of favorable ground, and what cover we do have gets blasted to hell shortly into the encounter. My usual caution leaves us stranded in the open, a more aggressive approach just hurls us into the meat grinder, I'm out of ideas. Advice/suggestions?

Hard to give (what will probably be bad) advice without seeing the map and what's happening on it, but if there's room, try moving your team in a completely different direction to ensure that you're not activating too many clusters of enemies at once (on normal, I'm pretty sure they won't bother you until you run into them). Then, try to draw them out and pick them off before approaching the ship. If that fails, maybe load a save from before the encounter. It will likely happen again, but the map will probably be different.

Hard to give (what will probably be bad) advice without seeing the map and what's happening on it, but if there's room, try moving your team in a completely different direction to ensure that you're not activating too many clusters of enemies at once (on normal, I'm pretty sure they won't bother you until you run into them). Then, try to draw them out and pick them off before approaching the ship. If that fails, maybe load a save from before the encounter. It will likely happen again, but the map will probably be different.

It's not one particular map. I've completely restarted on three separate occasions, with three completely different maps, and had the exact same experience. It's a supply ship, so there's only a very small "outside," usually at a height disadvantage. Enemies pour out by the dozen, and then what I described above happens. It seems to be impossible to avoid activating a huge crowd, as they're all right next to each other. Typically, any approach at all activates 3-4 groups.

Ah, I had an experience like that with a supply ship. I think I was dumped right at the rear, too far away to get to an advantageous position in time, too close to get away from the onslaught that poured out from everywhere. I didn't realize that at first, and took a lot of damage retreating back into a corner with a little height and cover, where the Sectopod attacked me. After a couple risky, no-cover moves I managed to take it out, hack a drone, and move up the side of the ship to assault from the front. I sent the drone in through the rear bay and a couple Mutons I'd seen before had gone deeper into the ship. Not sure why, but that probably kept it from being much worse.

I've encountered a catastrophic difficulty spike in my XCOM:EU game on normal, and I'm a bit baffled. I've got a UFO landing that, every time I play it, wipes out all my veterans. It's the first encounter I've had with a Sectopod, but that's only part of the problem. The geometry, the sheer volume of xenos, their level of armament, it all seems fairly insurmountable. I've got 4 colonels, a major, and a captain all in titan armor and armed with a mix of laser and plasma weaponry, but we just can't seem to find a foothold. Generally we can't gain any kind of favorable ground, and what cover we do have gets blasted to hell shortly into the encounter. My usual caution leaves us stranded in the open, a more aggressive approach just hurls us into the meat grinder, I'm out of ideas. Advice/suggestions?

Sectopod? Rockets. Spam rockets. Twelve damage a pop with HEAT ammo and get a Sniper with Plasma and an archangel armor. Get him on the back fly, him up high, double tap with a headshot. Sectopod problem solved. Alternatively, get an assault colonel with an alloy cannon

You can skip the driving by holding down the action button by the car; your partner will drive you to the next destination (and it will skip straight there). I found that essential to my enjoyment of the game.

I know,but i rather drive :P Forgot to say what i also don't like,that game is so automatic about everything,you are chasing suspect across buildings and your character is doing everything automatically,you are jest holding forward and he jump,climb,jump over fences etc..Let me do something on my own jesus.

Just played LA Noire for two hours and half,driving is awful,fist fighting medicore and shootings fairly good. Its quite immersive game,also facial animation is nice,don't know why people bash it.

I really liked it for what it was, some of the murder stories were quite nice, but in the end I could not bring myself to finish it. I just got bored with it. I think the most fun I had in this game was driving.

Apparently Bishop and Casavir have been fighting over my love when I kinda hate them both. Who knew?

I only had Elanee in my party in the beginning and for her two personal quests and apparently that was enough to declare her undying love for my character. Doesn't really help that she comes over as some weird elven pedophile/stalker if you pass her influence checks and ask her about her past. Imagine the same character but male. It wouldn't work at all.

It's worse than I remember, that's for sure. Not bad, but nowhere near as good as Shadows of Amn.

Combat heavily favors ranged characters because they can do crazy amounts of damage without getting hit. Now, the way healing works in D&D is ( at AD&D and 3-3.5 eds, I've never played 4th ) you generally don't heal while fighting (it's not very effective ), you do it after. Your melee guys will get hit, and even with very high ( eh, low in BG's case ) AC you'll get hit like mad. And you will run out of healing spells very fast and will have to rest quite often.

Most of the problems arise because you're low leveled and you don't have as many options as you would have in a P&P campaign. Then again if you've only played D&D on a computer you might not care as much. Oh and I didn't like their attempts at humor, but yeah. I remember liking it when I was younger so that's alright.

Overall, I liked it about as much as the original NWN but not as much as Hordes of the Underdark. It's very interesting to see how much they've improved for the second game though.

PS. I keep Elanee in my party in NWN2 just because I can keep hating her.

There's also the special arrows like arrows of piercing or arrows of detonation which can trivialize many encounters in the game, including the final battle. It's a bit different in BG2 because unless you go with the archer kit for rangers, ranged combat kinda sucks and most bows have very unspectacular enchantments compared to melee weapons. Not even the +5 bows in ToB are particularly good and I fear even a kensai with throwing axes would outperform most archers.